All we can say is that AnandTech has a source of information that is quite convincing and it states 16 pipelines for X1800 XT/XL and 12P for Pro. The Inquirer, Digitimes, etc. can report whatever they want, but we do not have their same sources, and our sources disagree with their sources right now. Time will tell who is correct. One of the goals of AnandTech is to do our best to report truth rather than rumor - or if we report rumor we make it clear that it is speculation and not fact. Reply

On the contrary - we have all the sources those guys do, and then some of course.

The difference between AnandTech and other websites is we have a strict policy that we only publish on information that is internally documented, and we have a copy of the document. We don't publish information without a roadmap/memo/etc.

As i said before, in the last generation cards ATI cards, on a apples 2 apples comparsion eg x850xt pe v 6800 ultra ATI was simply better at running half life 2, the same went for nvidia in doom3, so it always not about what power you are putting out its about how efficient you use what youve got, so until benchmarks are out we can speculate all we want:) my money is on a even split across different benchmarks and games Reply

They better have more than 16. Otherwise it's a complete failure and no high frequencies will save them. I'm really looking forward to the new cards. And I hope they will continue the tradition and KICK nVIDIA's ASS! :) Reply

quote:They better have more than 16. Otherwise it's a complete failure and no high frequencies will save them. I'm really looking forward to the new cards. And I hope they will continue the tradition and KICK nVIDIA's ASS! :)

Altough I agree that it would be nice to see a continuous trend of general whoopage on ATI's part, I have to say that pipelines and even clockspeed have little affect on how performance turns out. It all depends on the design of the pixel and vertex pipes. A good example of this is the FX5800 (Blow Dryer Edition). The 9700 Pro had 8 pixel pipes, 4 vertex pipes, and 256bit/DDR memory bus running at 325MHz/620MHz. The 5800 Ultra had a 4x2 pixel pipes, 3 vertex pipes, and had a 128bit/DDR2 which ran at 500MHz/1GHz. The 9700 Pro blew the FX5800 completely out of the water just because it had a better design. Even though the clocks were high, pure ingenuity came out on top. The same will (or won't, it's yet to be determined) happen here.

Just because the R520 may be a 16pp design, it doesn't mean that it'll be inferior to a 24pp design. Personally, I think the R520 will have more vertex processing power due to the high clockspeed. Assuming they use 8 vertex pipes, the R520's 8x600MHz is a lot better than the G70's 8x430MHz. Yet again, maybe the R520's vertex pipes will be weaker than the G70's and it'll all balance or. Who knows? Anand does... Reply

I guess it also worth taking into consideration what next-gen games are optimized to run on ATI or Nvidia archecture....just like half life 2 and doom 3, either way this dosn't look like the monster of I card i was hoping to see Reply

well, see, it just goes to show how many cards there are and most of them didn't come out until after the initial release. It also shows how many cards there really are and how confusing it is regardless if you're informed or Joe Six Pack Reply

Well, you have to realize that at first, the GT, GTO, XL and X850 series didn't exist. So, at the release of the R420, there was the X800, Pro, XT and XT-PE. Cards like the LE, GT, XL, and X850 were released later to fill in gaps in the market. Give it some time ^^ Reply

I can't wait to see how these cards stack up to their equivalently priced nvidia parts. The most I've ever spent on a video card was $350 for a geforce 2 ultra 64mb ddr, and I doubt I'd go higher than that ever. I love having the fastest card available, but it seems like that's no longer a possibility for me. Makes me sad, maybe one day ATI and nVIDIA will stop being so greedy and price their cards more sanely. Or maybe they will give me a free one because I'm better than everyone else at everything...... (yeah that includes you a$$hole) Reply

I don't think you understood. A pipe and clock ramp insinuates that there will be more pipes in the R580. It'll probably be a 24 pp GPU. Roadmaps disclosed that the R520 would be a four quad (4x4=16) GPU and the R580 would be a 6 quad (6x4=24) GPU.

Does anyone know how many vertex pipes the R520 has? : ( I can't remember where, but I think I once saw it would have up to 10 vps. Is this true? You'd think 8 VPs working at 600MHz would blow the G70 out of the water in terms of vertex processing power. I need to do more research regarding GPUs. Does anyone have any good references? Reply

Basically, with the higher clock speed there's no point in having more than 6 vertex pipelines. With R580, if they move to 24 pixel pipelines, it would make more sense to go to 8 vertex pipelines. 32 pixel pipes would probably need 10 vertex pipes. Then there's the whole "unified architecture" that we're moving towards.

Anyway, the main point is that I have yet to see anything officially stating that R520 has 6, 8, 10, or whatever pipes. Everything is pretty much a guess, and Ocham's Razor suggests that if 16/6 was good for last generation, and R520 has 16 pixel pipes, it probably has 6 vertex pipes again. :p Reply

I dont think you understand what you're talking there. The 850XT PE is faster in a few games under certain resolutions with AA/AF cranked up. That is due to clock speed and weaker AA/AF modi. But in most games under normal conditions, the 7800GT is faster - due to the 4 more pipes... Reply

the pipeline performance is theoretically negated by the higher clock speed so you are actually wrong

the reason the X850XT PE is slower is becuase its based off older technology and hasn't had any improvements made to its effeciency from the Radeon 9700 days which is why GeForce 6800 cards operate at lower clock speeds for the same performance Reply

This is false. There are actually quite a few improvements and optimizations to the efficiency of the engine in the R420 over the original R300 architecture. The basic principle and design is still there, but you have to take into account other smaller features that make no small difference altogether. Reply

either way the level of improvements made from R300 to R420 since they are based upon the same architecture is likely to be smaller than that from R420 to R520, also factor in the move to SM3.0(and consequently the move from FP24 to FP16/32) and we'll definitely see changes in performance on a pipeline level Reply

Any game-dev that did that, would be a complete idiot. The graphics high-end account for a small fraction of the market. Why whould they make a game only for that small fraction, when they can lower the requirements, and sell millions upon millions? Reply

That sums it up, used to be 6 months after a top of line card was released, you can get it for $200. Now if you look at it you will see you have OVER a year to get that same price vs performance.

Seems like ATI and Nvidia are going backwards imo...who cares about performance when its adding %30+ onto a cost of a PC to build. The whole idea about hardware is that even if performance doubles, price should not.
A case in point, i run a 9700 Pro, used to be the best card, when it first came out it was $350, i got mine for $120 about 6months after launch. When your best card now is topping out around $500-600, and 6 MONTHS after release your seeing less than $20 than that something is wrong

I have a hard time believing you got a 9700pro for $120 six months after launch, unless you bought it used.

I got a 9700pro in Jan 2004 for $180-190 (purchased thru newegg), and that was more than a year after launch if I recall correctly.

Aside from that minor quibble, I do agree with your overall point. It does seem as though the vendors are much more slow in lowering the price of previous gen "high-end" cards to bring them to the mid range. Instead, they release faster cards that are also much more expensive.

I will admit that I got my first 2nd and third 3d card (Voodoo 1, GF 1 SDR, GF3 Ti200) for about $200 each. The first two cards were definitely high end at the time, while the GF3 was second in line to the Ti500. It does seen somewhat odd that graphics cards are about the only computer compenent that has seemed to get higher and higher in price, instead of lower and lower like most other parts. On the other hand, I think the performance of the GPU has increased at a greater rate than that of the CPU over the last few years, so maybe the higher cost is somewhat justified (but it definitely is annoying).

I'm currently using an X800XL which I bought for $300 when they first arrived, and I don't plan on upgrading for at least another year, so I'll be interested in the next, next gen from NV and ATI.

I'm of the same opinion.. It used to be the CPU was the most expensive part of an build from a buyers standpoint, but over the past three years that has changed entirely.. Video cards manufacturers have consistently increased prices to the point that it's not affordable for most people to purchase a current generation card.. If ATi and Nvidia think that they continue this present trend of pushing MSRPs to new levels, they'll eventually find they've priced themselves out of most consumer's budgets.. Reply

Would you be more satisfied if they released $300 vid cards every 18 months? It would definately cost less to own the latest-and-greatest.

I wouldn't, because having super-high end video cards is a good thing, no matter how much they cost. This is what makes PCs such an great platform: if you want to pay more to get better graphics, you have the ability to do so. Games devs will always target the most popular platform, so you will never *need* a top-of-the line card to get a good experience (HL2 kicked ass on my 3.5 year-old PC).

You no longer need a high-end CPU to enjoy games because, generally, user demand for game improvements in CPU-intensive functions has gone down (only with the popularity of realistic physics has demand gone up, but with dedicated physics cards on the way, it will go down once again, just like when GPUs took over transform and lighting). Reply

"Would you be more satisfied if they released $300 vid cards every 18 months? "

As opposed to $600 cards every 6 months, thus costing twice the price and being outdated three times as quickly? Yes, I'd rather have a $300 purchase every 18 months, which is about as frequently as a person currently needs to upgrade a videocard anyway. The Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb card has been out around 24 months now, IIRC, and it is just now needing to be replaced by a 7800-series card to run very high resolutions smoothly in the latest games. So yeah, $300 every 18 months is about right. Reply

whats wrong is people that are WILLING to pay $500-600 for a video card

its all about supply and demand

also for as long as I can remember now high end pcs cost a little over 2k US, over time, many things have reduced in price, so expensive video cards just make it possible to keep the total system cost to around the same mark Reply

Being that the GTX has been out for so much longer and the prices have dropped since release, the GTX retails for about the same price as the X1800 PRO. That might be a tough sell for ATI unless these cards are monsters at all price points. Either way, it should be interesting to see how the new cards perform as they look competetive on paper. Reply

i dont see how the 6800gt can be a "problem" -- it kicks! the only reason why the x800xl is competitive right now is price, when these ati cards come out, nvidia will sure revise their whole pricing scheme

by looking at the speculation right now - the ati cards may only perform marginally better than the nvidia counterparts, not quite the revolutionary "kick ass" chip everyone's been expecting Reply

quote:by looking at the speculation right now - the ati cards may only perform marginally better than the nvidia counterparts, not quite the revolutionary "kick ass" chip everyone's been expecting

Yea but what if they got a 24 or 32 pipe version up their sleeve? I planned to buy a 7800GT for my new box this year, but after finding out how bad the visual quality (texture flickering) is compared to older GF and the current ATI card, I'm not so sure what I should do right now. I'm even tempted to get a very cheap card from either the current ATI line or the 6xxx series from NV and replace it later with a 7800GT (if NV can fix their visual problem with drivers) or the next ATI line - if it's superior.

It seems that FPS is what sells hardware these days.. ATI is no exception, though their image quality was not as low as the nvidia counterparts. This episode taught me a lesson though. I value image quality very high, especially when I put down several hundred bucks for a single piece of hardware. I will check and doublecheck any vid card from either company before I even consider upgrading in the future.

Somebody mentioned that the newest drivers fixed the texture flickering, gonna have to check that out somehow before I order the 7800GT I planned to buy. Reply